Cognitive Styles in Preschool-Age Children: Associations with Depression Risk and Evidence of Stability

Self-referential Processing in Remitted Depression: An Event-Related Potential Study

Background

Identifying mechanisms of major depressive disorder that continue into remission is critical, as these mechanisms may contribute to subsequent depressive episodes. Biobehavioral markers related to depressogenic self-referential processing biases have been identified in adults with depression. Thus, we investigated whether these risk factors persisted during remission as well as contributed to the occurrence of stress and depressive symptoms over time.

Methods

At baseline, adults with remitted depression (n = 33) and healthy control subjects (n = 33) were administered diagnostic and stress interviews as well as self-report symptom measures. In addition, participants completed a self-referential encoding task while electroencephalography data were acquired. Stress interviews and self-report symptom measures were readministered at the 6-month follow-up assessment.

Results

Drift diffusion modeling showed that compared with healthy individuals, adults with remitted depression exhibited a slower drift rate to negative stimuli, indicating a slower tendency to reject negative stimuli as self-relevant. At the 6-month follow-up assessment, a slower drift rate to negative stimuli predicted greater interpersonal stress severity among individuals with remitted depression but not healthy individuals while controlling for both baseline depression symptoms and interpersonal stress severity. Highlighting the specificity of this effect, results were nonsignificant when predicting noninterpersonal stress. For self-relevant positive words endorsed, adults with remitted depression exhibited smaller left- than right-hemisphere late positive potential amplitudes; healthy control subjects did not show hemispheric differences.

Conclusions

Self-referential processing deficits persist into remission. In line with the stress generation framework, these biases predicted the occurrence of interpersonal stress, which may provide insight about a potential pathway for the re-emergence of depressive symptoms.

Neurophysiological Markers Related to Negative Self-referential Processing Differentiate Adolescent Suicide Ideators and Attempters

Background

Adolescent suicide is a major public health concern, and presently, there is a limited understanding of the neurophysiological correlates of suicidal behaviors. Cognitive models of suicide indicate that negative views of the self are related to suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and this study investigated whether behavioral and neural correlates of self-referential processing differentiate suicide ideators from recent attempters.

Methods

Adolescents with depression reporting current suicidal ideation and no lifetime suicide attempts (suicide ideators, n = 30) and past-year suicide attempts (recent attempters, n = 26) completed a self-referential encoding task while high-density electroencephalogram data were recorded. Behavioral analyses focused on negative processing bias (i.e., tendency to attribute negative information as being self-relevant) and drift rate (i.e., slope of reaction time and response type that corresponds to how quickly information is accumulated to make a decision about whether words are self-referent). Neurophysiological markers probing components reflecting early semantic monitoring (P2), engagement (early late positive potential), and effortful encoding (late late positive potential) also were tested.

Results

Adolescent suicide ideators and recent suicide attempters reported comparable symptom severity, suicide ideation, and mental disorders. Although there were no behavioral differences, compared with suicide ideators, suicide attempters exhibited greater P2 amplitudes for negative versus positive words, which may reflect enhanced attention and arousal in response to negative self-referential stimuli. There were no group differences for the early or late late positive potential.

Conclusions

Enhanced sensory arousal in response to negative stimuli-that is, attentional orienting to semantic, emotional, and self-relevant features-differentiates adolescent suicide attempters from ideators and thus may signal risk for suicidal behavior.